In a new interview in the Gospel Herald, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green strongly defends religious freedom.
In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in Hobby Lobby's favor in a case deciding if employers who run their businesses on Christian principles had to provide insurance coverage for abortifacients under the Affordable Care Act.
"This nation was built on principles found in the Bible, and one of those concepts was our religious freedom," Green told the Herald.
"There are and will be challenges to the religious freedoms of Americans that we'll have to face in the future, and we'll have to continue to stand for those. And, even in other parts of the world, we need to stand for the religious freedoms of people all over the world."
Green also quoted Thomas Jefferson: "No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.”
Hobby Lobby began in 1970, when David and Barbara Green took out a $600 loan to begin making miniature picture frames out of their home. Two years later, they opened a store in Oklahoma City. Today Hobby Lobby has more than 750 stores and is the largest privately owned arts-and-crafts retailer in the world with approximately 32,000 employees and operating in 47 states.
Green spoke to the Gospel Herald just after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on religious liberty.
Reflecting on the groundbreaking Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision, Green called the Obamacare contraception mandate a "violation of conscience".
"We didn't want to be a part of taking life," he explained. "We wound up having to sue this government that we love. We won in the court, and it showed that a for-profit company does have religious freedoms, which was the ultimate argument. That put us in the same category as non-profits; in non-profits, there was an accommodation that was offered."
Last month, Hobby Lobby founder and CEO David Green released his memoir, “Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again: The Way of Living Generously.”
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